The Resurrection of Ascension

As you are no doubt aware (or have surely suspected), development on Ascension has been on hold for awhile, despite my initially over-optimistic plans to have it released by Halloween 2015 (or even 2014 before that). The reason for this is that I got so caught up in what Ascension hypothetically could be, that I lost sight of what it is, and I buckled under the pressure of the anticipated workload.

As a perfectionist, this is, unfortunately, a common problem that I have. But a wise man once told me that any project is a product of its moment, helping me to realize that it's better to make a statement with the possibility for improvement, than to withhold expression of one's talents until some hypothetical (and probably never-to-be-reached) point at which ultimate perfection will, hypothetically, be achieved.

Ascension is not the first project I started on RPG Maker, but it deserves to be the first project I finish, given the sheer scope of the RPG I am working on. I cannot even envision completing a project like Dragonfaith, until I have realized the completion of a smaller effort like Ascension. And I'd rather put out a complete project - imperfect and flawed though it may be - as an expression of what I am capable of at this point in time, even as an amateur game developer, than to withhold it until it satisfies some impossible rubric of professionality that exists as a vague, ideal form in my head, and that I cannot hope to reach at this time (indeed, if ever).

At the end of the day, I know I can't compete with the professionals out there. And I don't want to. I haven't dedicated my life to that path, and I'm not sure it isn't already too late if I even wanted to. But I don't. All I want to do is learn what I can - whatever bare essentials are necessary - in order to tell this story I have in my head that I want to share with the world. I don't need to make a flawless, groundbreaking game. It's just a delivery mechanism for my creativity.

So with that in mind, I am recommencing work on Ascension, with the goal of creating a complete (not perfect, but complete) version for release in the not-too-distant future. I'm not going to set down a date, but I'd like to say that I should have it ready before the year is out. Certainly I don't intend for it to take longer than that. After all, I still have much work to put in on Dragonfaith (which I'll probably continue to work on off and on, as I have been all this time).